How many baby Steppe mouses are in a litter?
A Steppe mouse (Mus spicilegus) usually gives birth to around 6 babies.With 4 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 24 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 1 grams (0 lbs) and measure 2.1 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Mus). An adult Steppe mouse grows up to a size of 7.5 cm (0′ 3″).
To have a reference: Humans obviously usually have a litter size of one ;). Their babies are in the womb of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks) and reach an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). They weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual, and reach an average age of 75 years.
The steppe mouse or mound-building mouse (Mus spicilegus) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in grassland and other open areas in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Steppe mouse is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Pygmy gerbil with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Least forest mouse weighting only 21 grams
- Dollman’s tree mouse weighting only 12 grams
- Arnhem Land rock rat weighting only 94 grams
- Sikkim mountain vole with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Brown deer mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Black-tailed mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Tres MarĂas Island mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Giluwe rat raching a size of 15 cm (0′ 6″)
- Short-nosed harvest mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Steppe mouse
Those animals also give birth to 6 babies at once:
- Desert dormouse
- New Guinean quoll
- Mindoro black rat
- Cinereus shrew
- Mohave ground squirrel
- Brush-tailed phascogale
- Crest-tailed mulgara
- Uinta chipmunk
- Stoat
- Dwarf shrew
Animals with the same size as a Steppe mouse
Also reaching around 7.5 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Hodgson’s brown-toothed shrew gets as big as 6.4 cm (0′ 3″)
- Slender harvest mouse gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- San Diego pocket mouse gets as big as 8.3 cm (0′ 4″)
- Northern groove-toothed shrew mouse gets as big as 8.1 cm (0′ 4″)
- Long-eared flying mouse gets as big as 8.7 cm (0′ 4″)
- Wagner’s gerbil gets as big as 8.3 cm (0′ 4″)
- Seychelles sheath-tailed bat gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Mindanao shrew-rat gets as big as 9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mauritian tomb bat gets as big as 8.4 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mexican small-eared shrew gets as big as 6.1 cm (0′ 3″)